Court Rejects COOL Injunction

By P. Scott Shearer, Bockorny Group, Washington, DC

Mon, 2013-09-16 21:05

Judge Ketanji BrownJackson for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied industry’s request for a preliminary injunction that would have blocked the implementation of USDA’s Country-of-Origin Labeling (COOL) rule. Judge Brown said the arguments by the plaintiffs failed to show that the labeling rules would cause irreparable harm to their member companies and livestock producers.

The case had been filed by the American Meat Institute, North American Meat Association, and the pork and cattle associations of the U.S. and Canada. The North American Meat Association said, “This decision will have real consequences and, at a time of rising meat prices and record low herd size, they will be damaging.” The U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, a strong supporter of COOL, said, “The revised USDA regulations announced on May 23 of this year will certainly reduce consumer confusion and will allow cattle producers the ability to differentiate their product from foreign beef.”